Science > Environmental Issues
Pesticides killing bees
treesparrow:
To: Bees
From: Scientists
RE: Pesticides that are killing you.
April 7, 2010 at 10:30PM by Kim Flottum
The most recent research report studying declines in honey bee populations studied the amounts of agricultural pesticides found in hundreds of samples of pollen, wax , royal jelly, honey and bees taken from hundreds of beehives – some were from sick colonies, others weren't sick. The results are pretty scary.
Importantly, the results also show the amounts and kinds of beekeeper applied pesticides found in those hundreds of samples taken from these same beehives. These results may be even scarier. That beekeepers have made matters worse trying to make matters better is a conundrum we'll explore next time, but for now, know that they have.
The hundreds of colonies sampled were in a variety of locations, and were in included in a variety of ongoing studies. Some samples were taken from apiaries that had no symptoms of colony collapse disorder. Some were declining from or already dead from colony collapse disorder. Others were taken from a study of a migratory operation moving on the east coast during a series of pollination jobs on several crops, while others were taken from a particular apple orchard pollination study. Some samples were taken from beeswax foundation sheets... those used by beekeepers to guide their bees in comb-building, and are purchased from suppliers and put in new or rebuilt frames. This is a whole different disaster, but it comes from the same set of villains and heroes.
You just know that honey bees and pesticides can't do well when mixed, right? Honey bees forage in the real world looking for food. That's what they do. They rummage around agricultural crops while they are being sprayed, right after they are sprayed, and long after systemic pesticides were added and have soaked into the pollen and nectar rewards the bees seek. They didn't get the SPRAY TODAY memo I guess. They cruise over lawns looking for clover and other blooming weeds and while they're there they check out your backyard garden, that small orchard next door and just about everywhere there's a flower to visit.
Bees are like tiny dust mops. They gather in all the things they encounter and bring them back home. Pollen is the obvious dust-like material they collect. Pollen is the protein they feed to their young... the future of the colony. Feeding poison to your children is a crime almost everywhere. Except here.
All the foraging bees in a colony land on millions and millions of flowers seeking nectar during the flowering season. And anything on those flower petals or leaves sticks to their feet and gets brought back home. They are always looking for water, too, and sometimes puddles are not what they seem around farms and golf courses and homeowner's lawns, and that gets brought home too... and this toxic cocktail is their staple... their day to day diet... now made from poisonous parts per million.
So bees are encountering agricultural and landscape pesticides almost wherever they go. Now think about this: You go just about everywhere bees go. Walk on a treated lawn... pesticides go home with you. Walk through an apple orchard... pesticides on the ground, on the leaves, on the apples. What about your garden? Or the golf course you visit routinely? Do they spray for mosquitoes where you are? What about those tree boring beetles recently introduced into the U.S.? They're treating those trees with sprays and drenches and injections and it all goes to the leaves and flowers this spring. Got ants or termites at home? No more when the newest bait gets going and everybody forgets where they live.
Got Weeds? Not anymore. Herbicides took care of that problem wherever weeds shouldn't be. Not a dandelion to be seen anywhere... in lawns, center strips on city streets... and those herbicides land on leaves that bees land on too. And home they go, another ingredient in the diet of death.
We live in the same pesticide-laden soup our bees do, and now we can prove it's a killing field. This study is the classic "you won't find it if you don't look, but now we've looked."
What we found is killing our bees. How long do we have?
_http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/bees/pesticides-honey-bees?src=rss
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here's the link to the research mentioned -
_http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754
Extract -
Conclusions/Significance
The 98 pesticides and metabolites detected in mixtures up to 214 ppm in bee pollen alone represents a remarkably high level for toxicants in the brood and adult food of this primary pollinator. This represents over half of the maximum individual pesticide incidences ever reported for apiaries. While exposure to many of these neurotoxicants elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness, the effects of these materials in combinations and their direct association with CCD or declining bee health remains to be determined.
voyageur:
Thanks treesparrow,
Our societal marriage to herbicides and pesticides was a long process of conditioning by the Chemical industrial complex. One goes back to the masters of this I.G. Farbin. And now our stores are choked full of 2-4D’s (mixed in with about 1,500 different herbicides) of which mecoprop and dicamba make the base , this of course is commercially applied to most fields and or variations of 2-4d. Glyphosate (Roundup) is next as an enzyme inhibitor and covers our productive fields too. Both these are sold on a massive consumer scale; domestically, mom’s and pop’s also use it like it’s just a neat little bio-selective trick. It builds up in soil and washes into the ground water by the ton. Dimethoate is particularly nasty as a organophosphate insecticide and it is an anticholinesterase , inhibiting Biological cholinesterase of insects or our and animal central nervous system’s. Don’t think hardly an orchard is not without this compound mix.
All very sad this business. One of our local honey producers who operates near the railway complained to Transport Canada who governs this because twice a year in the heat, the days when his bees are most active (need heat for chemical applications), the railway sprays both sides of the tracks.; as you can imagine this is thousands of kilometres. In the heat the chemicals evaporate and rise like clouds, drifting to and fro. To my knowledge he has no resolve. :(
Here is a little piece on 24-d from the good propaganda stewards of this chemical.
http://www.24d.org/
--- Quote ---Very few substances have been subjected to the extensive examination and review that 2,4-D has withstood, and as a result, more is known about 2,4-D than almost any other chemical on the planet. Just as it has for more than 60 years, 2,4-D continues to be one of the most important herbicides for homeowners, land manages and farmers across the globe.
The Industry Task Force II on 2,4-D Research Data was formed to work closely with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PRMA) to fund new research and provide information to each agency as required by their respective pesticide re-registration and re-evaluation programs.
The 2,4-D Task Force is made up of those companies owning the technical registrations on the active ingredient in 2,4-D herbicides. They are Dow AgroSciences (USA), Nufarm, Ltd. (Australia) and Agro-Gor Corporation (USA & Argentina). The Task Force does not conduct the research required by EPA and PRMA, it simply funds the scientific research needed to meet all agency requirements and keep 2,4-D registrations in the United States and Canada constantly up to date. All research funded by the Task Force is conducted under stringent Good Laboratory (GLP) Practice guidelines.
--- End quote ---
Potamus:
Hey treesparrow, thanks! I have been following this "fad theme" about disappearing bees that
is typified here:
http://news.discovery.com/animals/honey-bees-disappearing-still-a-problem.html
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp
How is the story posted here related? I don't recall ever having seen through the prattle of this
three-year-old internet epigram that the culprit might be agri-chems. Hmmm.
EDIT: Here are the related threads I could find here:
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5515.0
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5613.0
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5861.0
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5865.0
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=5886.0
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=6027.0
WIN 52:
Living near the Canadian Shield, blueberrys have always been a readily available treat. The past few years there have been many flowers but no fruit. I had always thought that because of the area not being used for agriculture, the fruits would be organic. It seems the chemical intrusion is having a direct effect on the wild bee population, even in the wilderness.
I have been using local honey(no rhododanderons in Manitoba), cinnamon, juice of 1 lemmon, 1/2 oz rum and hot water as a flue buster. Thanks for the heads up.
Gimpy:
One of my Hubby's older friends has a few hives he harvests honey from each year. He's had no die offs at all, because he uses no pesticides on his small farm, and there are no large fields near him either. He said people have asked him for hives for their orchards and he refused, stating that pesticides would kill his bees and he wanted no part of that. Ever since the colony collapse disorder started being hyped, he's told us its crap....that the pesticides make the bees so weak they die of any little thing.
Its not proof or a study, but I've learned to listen to people who have practical experience doing something. ;)
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